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Can "みたい" mean "want to see", or does it always mean "looks like"/"seems like"? If not, how would "want to see" be expressed?

Specifically, assuming it has both uses, it would seem ambiguous to me here: なんだか違う映画みたいだなあ

Would that be "I want to see a somewhat different movie", or "That seems like a somewhat different movie"?

Shane
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"That seems like a somewhat different movie" would be

なんだか違う映画みたいだなあ

Whereas "I want to see a different movie" would be

なんだか違う映画をみたいなあ

So to answer your question directly, yes, "を見たい" means "want to see" -- and you'd use the kanji "見たい", in most general cases. (There's no だ after みたい in this case.)

When you want to say "is like", you'd say "みたい" without a particle in front, and without kanji.

Though "見たい" is the most general kanji for "want to see/look", you can use more specific ones:

"診たい" -- want to examine, as in examine a patient.

"観たい" -- want to watch, as in sightseeing or watching a movie.

"看たい" -- want to look after, as in looking after a patient, from 看病 （かんびょう） -- not too common.

Rei Miyasaka
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  • 【視る】を忘れないように... – istrasci Jul 03 '11 at 22:50
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    one trick is that typically verb-like grammatical structures in japanese are written in hiragana. – Mark Hosang Jul 04 '11 at 00:55
  • @Mark Hmm... really? 死ぬ、出る、現れる、倒れる... Bigger words are more often hiragana especially these days, but that doesn't seem to be limited to verbs or verb-like structures. – Rei Miyasaka Jul 04 '11 at 01:37
  • I don't know what you mean by "bigger words". Endings like みたい、おく、みる I had learned HAD to be written in hiragana as opposed to kanji when using them as grammatical structures. Though i can't think of any others off the top of my head. – Mark Hosang Jul 04 '11 at 02:20
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    Yes, I think that usage dictates that normal verbs are in kanji, while auxiliaries have to be in hiragana. So, "違う映画みたい" and "違う映画を観たい". Same goes for "〜てくる"、"〜ていく", "〜ておく"… – Axioplase Jul 04 '11 at 02:27
  • @Axioplase Ahh, makes sense. One of those things that native speakers don't really notice. – Rei Miyasaka Jul 04 '11 at 02:32
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    Many Japanese like to write 見たい/観たい/視たい as just みたい when writing short messages because they don't know which kanji is appropriate (though in case of 映画, all three can be used), so this may confuse beginners especially if を is omitted. – syockit Jul 04 '11 at 04:03
  • @syockit: 映画を視る looks unnatural to me (unless one is talking about a silent film). – Tsuyoshi Ito Jul 04 '11 at 12:54
  • The grammatical difference is one is a noun: みたい [with だ] while みたい (見たい) is a verb conjugated in the form to mean 'want/desire' – h4xnoodle Jul 04 '11 at 14:44
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    @h4xnoodle みたい as in みたいだ is not a noun. If anything it's a な-adjective. – ジョン Apr 14 '12 at 11:41